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Ruth RendellRuth Rendell
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Bibliography |
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Critical perspective
BiographyCrime novelist Ruth Rendell was born on 17 February 1930 in London, and educated at Loughton County High School, Essex. She is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has received many awards for her work, including the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger (lifetime achievement award), and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence.
Her two books of collected short stories were published in 1987 and 2008. Many of her novels and short stories have been successfully adapted for television.
Genres (in alphabetical order)Crime, Fiction, Short stories
BibliographyFrom Doon with Death Long, 1964 To Fear a Painted Devil Long, 1965 Vanity Dies Hard Long, 1966 A New Lease of Death Long, 1967 Wolf to the Slaughter Long, 1967 The Secret House of Death Long, 1968 The Best Man to Die Long, 1969 A Guilty Thing Surprised Hutchinson, 1970 No More Dying Then Hutchinson, 1971 One Across, Two Down Hutchinson, 1971 Murder Being Once Done Hutchinson, 1972 Some Lie and Some Die Hutchinson, 1973 The Face of Trespass Hutchinson, 1974 Shake Hands Forever Hutchinson, 1975 A Demon in My View Hutchinson, 1976 The Fallen Curtain and Other Stories Hutchinson, 1976 A Judgement in Stone Hutchinson, 1977 A Sleeping Life Hutchinson, 1978 Make Death Love Me Hutchinson, 1979 Means of Evil and Other Stories Hutchinson, 1979 The Lake of Darkness Hutchinson, 1980 Put On By Cunning Hutchinson, 1981 Master of the Moor Hutchinson, 1982 The Fever Tree and Other Stories Hutchinson, 1982 The Speaker of Mandarin Hutchinson, 1983 The Killing Doll Hutchinson, 1984 The Tree of Hands Hutchinson, 1984 An Unkindness of Ravens Hutchinson, 1985 The New Girlfriend and Other Stories Hutchinson, 1985 A Dark-Adapted Eye (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 1986 Live Flesh Hutchinson, 1986 A Fatal Inversion (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 1987 A Warning to the Curious/The Ghost Stories of M. R. James (editor) Hutchinson, 1987 Collected Short Stories Hutchinson, 1987 Heartstones Hutchinson, 1987 Talking to Strange Men Hutchinson, 1987 The House of Stairs (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 1988 The Veiled One Hutchinson, 1988 Ruth Rendell's Suffolk Muller, 1989 The Bridesmaid Hutchinson, 1989 Undermining the Central Line (with Colin Ward) Chatto & Windus, 1989 Gallowglass (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 1990 Going Wrong Hutchinson, 1990 King Solomon's Carpet (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 1991 The Copper Peacock and Other Stories Hutchinson, 1991 Kissing the Gunner's Daughter Hutchinson, 1992 Asta's Book (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 1993 The Crocodile Bird Hutchinson, 1993 No Night is Too Long (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 1994 Simisola Hutchinson, 1994 Blood Lines: Long and Short Stories Hutchinson, 1995 In the Time of His Prosperity (as Barbara Vine) Penguin, 1995 The Brimstone Wedding (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 1995 The Reason Why (editor) Cape, 1995 The Keys to the Street Hutchinson, 1996 Road Rage Hutchinson, 1997 A Sight for Sore Eyes Hutchinson, 1998 The Chimney Sweeper's Boy (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 1998 Harm Done Hutchinson, 1999 Grasshopper (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 2000 Piranha to Scurfy and Other Stories Hutchinson, 2000 Adam and Eve and Pinch Me Hutchinson, 2001 The Babes in the Wood Hutchinson, 2002 The Blood Doctor (as Barbara Vine) Viking, 2002 The Rottweiler Hutchinson, 2003 13 Steps Down Hutchinson, 2004 End in Tears Hutchinson, 2005 The Minotaur (as Barbara Vine) Penguin, 2005 The Thief Arrow, 2006 The Water's Lovely Hutchinson, 2006 Not In The Flesh Hutchinson, 2007 Collected Stories 2 Hutchinson, 2008 Portobello Hutchinson, 2008 The Birthday Present (as Barbara Vine) Penguin, 2008 The Monster in the Box Hutchinson, 2009
Prizes and awards1976 Crime Writers' Association Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction A Demon in my View 1981 Arts Council National Book Award for Genre Fiction Lake of Darkness 1984 Crime Writers' Association Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction The Tree of Hands 1986 Crime Writers' Association Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction Live Flesh 1987 Crime Writers' Association Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction (as Barbara Vine) A Fatal Inversion 1987 Edgar Award (Mystery Writers of America) A Dark-Adapted Eye 1990 Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence 1991 Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger (lifetime achievement award) 1991 Crime Writers' Association Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction (as Barbara Vine) King Solomon's Carpet 1996 CBE
Critical PerspectiveRuth Rendell has repeatedly stated her dislike for violence and torture in books. She has also written that she cannot imagine what it may feel like to kill someone. These statements may come as a surprise from a writer who has made the main focus of her books the investigations in the psychology of deviant individuals placed at the margins of society. Yet, it may be for this attitude that, as fellow novelist Patrick Gale observes, 'Rendell writes about people as coolly as a behaviourist observing the effects of fear or pain on laboratory rats.'
Rendell’s production can be divided into three genres. Her first novel From Doon with Death (1964) introduces the character of Inspector Wexford and the fictional Southern town of Kingsmarkham which represents a microcosm of society. Her second book To Fear a Painted Devil (1965) was the first of her crime thrillers not to contain the reassuring presence of Wexford. Rendell alternated these two series until 1986, when, under the name of Barbara Vine, she published her first psychological novel, A Dark-Adapted Eye. The Vine novels differ from the Rendell ones as they feature deeper psychological characterization and a more sustained social critique.
Running throughout the Rendell and Vine books is an interest for outsiders, influenced by the author's experience as a child, growing up in Britain with an English father and a Swedish mother, who, during the Second World War, people would look at with suspicion, thinking her to be German.
Contrary to P. D. James, the other Queen of British crime who sits at the opposite end of the House of Lords, Rendell is a convinced Labour supporter and she is not afraid of defining her political views as 'socialist'. Rendell’s progressive political views are reflected in her novels which try to innovate a fundamentally conservative literary genre. Ruth Rendell writes mysteries in the vein of a social critic who observes and exposes social inequalities, racial and sexual discriminations and gender biases. Rendell subverts the traditional conventions usually associated with the genre and that make the detective instrumental to the restoration of order in a society momentarily upset by the chaos brought about by crime. Inspector Wexford, whose liberalism is confronted with the conservatism of his deputy, Mike Burden, does assure criminals to justice. Yet, Rendell insists on realism and strives to characterise her detective as an ordinary person: 'He’s not a glamour figure.' In addition, the truth that Wexford’s investigations bring to light indicts traditional and conservative beliefs as responsible for the crimes that have been perpetrated. Murders and transgressions of laws are always linked in Rendell’s books to social injustice. The portrait of 'middle England' emerging from her novel is one where traditional values connive with class differences, racism and sexism to stimulate, rather than to keep in check, the irrational desires that will lead people to kill. Although Rendell’s stand-alone novels are more directly concerned with social and political issues than the Wexford novels, the inspector’s enquiries are not simply general searches for a metaphysical truth, but are always rooted in current debates such as feminism, racism, environmental preservation, labour exploitation, domestic violence, female circumcision, the arrival of new immigrants from Africa to Britain and paedophilia. Contrary to more traditional inspectors, Wexford is by no means infallible and, in spite of his liberalism, is sometimes hostage to the same social conventions which he exposes as harmfully wrong. For example, in Harm Done (1999), Wexford himself is sceptic about the possibility that domestic violence may occur in a respectable, middle-class milieu, an assumption that he will have to revise in the course of the narrative. In the more recent novels, such as Not in the Flesh (2007) and The Monster in the Box (2009), Wexford also seems to be facing physical decay and his thoughts increasingly focus on death. In End in Tears (2005), Wexford is vocally denounced as old-fashioned by the local press of Kingsmarkham which challenges as ineffectual his investigative methods.
The novels signed as Barbara Vine (Barbara is Rendell’s middle name and Vine is a great-grandmother maiden name) merge psychological insights with thriller conventions, often starting from the theme of family disease and the perpetuation of deviancy through different generations. The Vine novels problematise the ability of society to judge the guilt of criminals and to establish the true human motives to commit crime. They combine the exploration of family inheritance with the challenging of social assumptions and institutions. For example, in The Blood Doctor (2000), the theme of family inheritance is seen both from the medical standpoint of haemophilia and from the political one of the 1999 reform of the House of Lords. In The Minotaur (2005), the Swedish narrator Kerstin Kvist finds herself thrown into the completely unfamiliar world of the Cosways where the middle-aged John seems to suffer from mental illnesses. A complete outsider in the 1960s rural England where the novel takes place, Kvist also notices signs of mental illness in John’s three sisters. Yet, in the end, she brings to light the partiality and inaccuracy of the medical diagnosis.
Whether written as Rendell or Vine, her books have made more tenuous the line dividing popular and serious literature. Some critics, including Joan Smith, have denounced that it is sexism which still belittles her as a popular writer: 'It’s astounding that she hasn’t won the Booker. She has developed into a very good novelist, not just a crime novelist. It’s pure sexism - everyone knows that women can write detective fiction, so they’re allowed to succeed at it. Ian McEwan would never be pigeonholed in this way, even though you could say that he’s written detective novels too.' Whether one agrees or not with Smith’s feminist critique of the literary establishment, Rendell is surely a literary innovator whose plots remind us of social realities which we too often try hard to forget. Rendell has also helped to innovate the literary form and the narrative techniques of detective fiction. As it is the case with the stand-alone novel The Water’s Lovely (2006), Rendell’s narratives often adopt a multiplicity of points of view that do not merely advance the story, but constantly redefine the meaning of the events, thus challenging the reader’s conclusions about the characters.
Through her careful depictions of the different social backgrounds where the action takes place, Rendell has become a valuable critic of society and her novels have been described as 'social comedies', constantly calling into question the boundaries between social classes. They explore the hidden ties that link social realities that have apparently nothing in common. Tellingly, the two murdered women in End in Tears belong to very different social classes as do the different characters of Portobello (2008). Her books, hard to categorize as 'popular' or 'genre fiction', are set in a fundamentally amoral world (which is how Rendell describes our contemporary society) and her endings take an unexpectedly more open turn than we would expect from mystery stories: the crime may be solved, but no salvation or redemption occurs and the tensions which generated it in the first place are left unanswered.
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